IASbaba's Flagship Course: Integrated Learning Programme (ILP) - 2024 Read Details
(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)
Objective: To address the need of menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls residing primarily in rural areas
Funds are provided to States/UTs through National Health Mission for decentralized procurement of sanitary napkins packs for provision primarily to rural adolescent girls at subsidized rates as per proposals received from the States and UTs in their Programme Implementation Plans.
This scheme encompasses the following:
A range of IEC material has been developed around Menstrual hygiene Scheme, using a 360 degree approach to create awareness among adolescent girls about safe & hygienic menstrual health practices which includes audio, video and reading materials for adolescent girls and job-aids for ASHAs and other field level functionaries for communicating with adolescent girls.
ASHAs across the country are trained and play a significant role in promotion of use and distribution of the sanitary napkins.
Department of Health Research, under the Ministry of Health, is involved in assessment of all newer, alternative, environment friendly menstrual hygiene products to look into their safety and acceptability features.
Cabinet approves/apprised of
MoU between India and Morocco on Cooperation in the area of Cyber Security: The MoU intends to promote closer cooperation for exchange of knowledge and experience in detection, resolution and prevention of security-related incidents between India and Morocco. Implementation of the MoU will result in significant mutual benefits in the Cyber Security sector, through institutional and capacity building with Morocco in the field of Cyber Security.
High level committee to implement Clause 6 of Assam Accord Several Longstanding demands of Bodos also approved: After Assam agitation of 1979-1985, Assam Accord was signed on 15th August, 1985. Clause 6 of the Assam Accord envisaged that appropriate constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. The Committee shall examine the effectiveness of actions since 1985 to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, will hold discussions with all stakeholders and assess the required quantum of reservation of seats in Assam Legislative Assembly and local bodies for Assamese people. The Committee will also assess the requirement of measures to be taken to protect Assamese and other indigenous languages of Assam, quantum of reservation in employment under Government of Assam and other measures to protect, preserve and promote cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of Assamese people.
First-ever three-way merger in Indian Banking with amalgamation of Vijaya, Dena and Bank of Baroda: with Bank of Baroda as the transferee bank and Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank as transferor banks. The amalgamation will be the first-ever three-way consolidation of banks in India, with the amalgamated bank being India's second largest Public Sector Bank.
Amendment to the Trade Unions Act, 1926 to make provisions regarding Recognition of Trade Unions: The approval will facilitate:
Restructuring of National Health Agency as "National Health Authority" for better implementation of Pradhan Mantri - Jan Arogya Yojana: With this approval, the existing society "National Health Agency" has been dissolved and will be replaced by National Health Authority as an attached office to Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.
Continuation of Rastriya Yuva Sashaktikaran Karyakram Scheme: The Scheme aims to develop the personality and leadership qualities of the youth and to engage them in nation building activities.
The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Bill, 2018’ for revision in list of Scheduled Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh: After the Bill becomes an Act, member of the communities newly listed in the revised list of Scheduled Tribes of Arunachal Pradesh will also be able to derive benefits meant for STs under the existing schemes of the Government.
Continuation of Umbrella scheme for "Family Welfare and Other Health Interventions" during 2017-18 to 2019-20: The five schemes listed in the proposal are crucial to attaining the goals and objectives laid out in National Health Policy (NHP) 2017, and international commitments in the form of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SwasthaNagrikAbhiyan(SNA): For dissemination of information on health issues to create awareness among citizens of India of ail age/sex/locations and appropriately influence their health seeking behavior to encourage healthy lifestyles and empower the citizens.
Free Supply of Contraceptives: For providing free supply of contraceptives including condoms, Oral Contraceptive Pills, Pregnancy Test Kits, other contraceptives, etc. to States with a view to improve Maternal and Child Health and achieving population stabilization.
MIS Scheme now proposed as Health Surveys and Health Research (HSHR): For sourcing of data on population, health and nutrition for India and its States including through periodically conducted National Family Health Survey, which is one of the largest surveys of its kind worldwide. The NFHS provides valuable data for policy and programmes right up to the district level.
Social Marketing of Contraceptives: For branding, attractively packaging, marketing arid selling of products and services related to Family Planning for low-income groups at affordable prices.
Population Research Centres (PRCs): For third party evaluation of the scheme on PRCs and specially of those centres which are being considered for continuation will be carried out.
(Topic:
The launch is a reflection of the shared commitment by Prime Minister Modi and President Trump to provide a positive, forward-looking vision for the India-U.S. strategic partnership and to promote synergy in their diplomatic and security efforts. They resolved to continue meetings in this format on an annual basis.
Celebrating over 70 years of diplomatic cooperation, the Ministers reaffirmed their view that India and the United States, as sovereign democracies founded on the values of freedom, justice, and commitment to the rule of law, must continue to lead global efforts to promote peace, prosperity, and security.
Recognizing their two countries are strategic partners, major and independent stakeholders in world affairs, the Ministers committed to work together on regional and global issues, including in bilateral, trilateral, and quadrilateral formats. The two sides further decided to establish secure communication between the Minister of External Affairs of India and the U.S. Secretary of State, and between the Minister of Defense of India and the U.S. Secretary of Defense, to help maintain regular high-level communication on emerging developments.
Strengthening the Defense and Security Partnership:
Partners in the Indo-Pacific and Beyond:
Promoting Prosperity and People-to-People Ties:
Must Read: Link
(Topic: Agriculture, Environment)
Initiative have been taken to make agriculture more adaptive and resilient to climate variability and in the process to reduce carbon emission.
Soil, water and crop management practices that reduce carbon emission include:
(Topic: Schemes and policies under Agriculture)
The scheme aims to supplement farm income of farmers with focus on the development of complete value chain of bamboo sector to link growers with consumers.
Major objectives of the Mission are:
Prelims oriented News:
1st rank in ‘Swachh Survekshan’ 2017: Indore
Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) was established in National Housing Bank (NHB) with an objective to improve the affordability of the target group to own their homes.
The “Ease of Living” Index is an initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to help cities assess their liveability vis-à-vis global and national benchmarks and encourage cities to move towards an ‘outcome-based’ approach to urban planning and management.
CITIIS (Cities Investments to Innovate Integrate and Sustain) was launched in partnership with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and European Union.
Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA): The core objective of this transformative legislation is to ensure regulation and promotion of real estate sector in an efficient manner and to protect the interest of home buyers.
Municipal bonds are an important instrument to mobilise financial resources for investment in Urban Infrastructure.
I-Metros (Indian Metro Rail Organisations’ Society) - a platform to exchange ideas, pooling of knowledge and sharing of experience, best practices, innovations etc. among the Indian metro rail companies to nurture excellence in performance
Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme being implemented in the statutory towns in the country for reducing the poverty and vulnerability of urban poor households since April 2014. The primary target of DAY-NULM is urban poor, including urban homeless & urban street vendors and emphasis is laid on mobilisation of vulnerable sections of urban population into Self Help Groups (SHGs).
The World Bank has recently released the Doing Business Report (DBR) 2019 and the country’s rank in Construction Permits indicator has gone up to 52 from 181, a year ago. This could be possible due to the reforms implemented and consistent efforts of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi and Mumbai in facilitating Ease of Doing Business in construction permits.
National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) to enhance the experience of religious tourists visiting prominent heritage sites is being implemented in 12 cities, namely, Ajmer, Amaravati, Amritsar, Badami, Dwaraka, Gaya, Kancheepuram, Mathura, Puri, Varanasi, Velankanni and Warangal.
Setting up of two Defence Production Corridors: One each in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Tamil Nadu
INSV Tarini: The first-ever all-women crew circumnavigated the globe in an indigenously built 56-foot Indian Navy Sailing Vessel
Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) 'Tejas': India joined the elite group of nation which have developed the Air-to-Air refuelling system for military class aircraft when Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) 'Tejas' successfully completed mid-air refuelling trial by wet (actual) engagement, transferring 1,900 kgs fuel from IAF IL78 mid-air refuelling tanker
Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti: To migrate from the culture of seeking Transfer of Technology (ToT) from foreign sources to generating Intellectual Property in India, to achieve the goal of self-reliance in Defence sector.
Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) a scheme of Department of Defence Production (DDP), formulated in collaboration with Start Up India and Atal Innovation Mission, with the objective of bringing Start-ups to solve problems of defence production, innovate new technologies required by defence forces and reduce dependence on imported technology. iDEX is aimed at creation of an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging Industries including MSMEs, Start-ups, Individual Innovators, R&D institutes and Academia and provide them grants/funding and other support to carry out R&D.
ShaGun (from the words Shaala and Gunvatta) which has two parts i.e., one is a Repository of good practices, photographs, videos, studies, newspaper articles etc on elementary education, State /UT wise has been developed. Its purpose is to showcase success stories and also to provide a platform for all stakeholders to learn from each other, and instill a positive competitive spirit among all the States and UTs.
The second part is the online monitoring module of Shagun which measures state-level performance and progress against key educational indicators which enables the Government of India and the State and UT Departments of education to conduct real-time assessments which normal paper-based monitoring mechanisms did not allow. Through Shagun, the data collection and reporting processes have been simplified; resulting in a totally transparent and efficient system.
Shaala Siddhi is a School Standards and Evaluation Framework, developed by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), which enables the schools to self-evaluate based on seven key domains.
e-PATHSHALA: a single point repository of e resources containing NCERT textbooks and various other learning resources has been developed for showcasing and disseminating all educational resources including textbooks, audio, video, periodicals, and a variety of other print and non-print materials.
Diksha Portal: The portal envisages to help teachers boost their teaching skills and create their own separate profile with their skills and knowledge, and help in improving quality of education with use of latest technologies in education sector.
Rashtriya Gokul Mission: Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries has been implementing Rashtriya Gokul Mission with the aim of development and conservation of indigenous bovine breeds.
Comprehensive Handloom Cluster Development Scheme:
BhoomiRashi portal: In the past years, acquisition of land for the purpose of National Highway projects, payment of compensation to the land owners etc were done manually by physical movement of documents in the form of files. However, in that procedure some constraints viz. delay in issuing notification, errors in the land/area details etc were being faced. In order to overcome these issues, to cut short delays and avoid parking of public funds with the Competent Authority for Land Acquisition (CALA), Ministry has developed a web-based Utility –BhoomiRashi to fully digitize and automate the entire process of land acquisition.
With the operation of this Portal, the land acquisition process has been expedited significantly, become error-free and more transparent and the notifications at every stage are being processed on real time basis. While the physical processing of the cases usually took considerable time, ranging from weeks to even months, and there were errors whose rectification caused further delays, the processing time using this portal has been reduced to less than two weeks in a majority of cases and even a few days in some cases.
Samagra Shiksha scheme focuses on improvement of quality of education by providing support for different interventions like; in-service training of teachers and schools heads, conduct of achievement surveys at National and State level, provision of textbooks as per Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, remedial teaching for academically weaker students, ICT and digital initiatives, vocational education, composite school grant to every school for providing a conducive learning environment has been increased and from this year provisions for library grants and grants for sports and physical education have also been introduced.
Geographical Indications (GIs) are registered as per the provisions of the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration & Protection) Act, 1999. As on 24.12.2018, 330 GIs have been registered.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP): A proposed Free Trade Agreement between ten ASEAN member states and their six Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners namely India, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and Republic of Korea
INDO-France Pact for Sustainable Development
Ministry of Food Processing Industries
Mega Food Parks: Mega Food Parks create modern infrastructure facilities for food processing along the value chain from farm to market with strong forward and backward linkages through a cluster-based approach. Common facilities and enabling infrastructure is created at Central Processing Centre and facilities for primary processing and storage is created near the farm in the form of Primary Processing Centers (PPCs) and Collection Centers (CCs).
Integrated Cold Chain: Ministry of Food Processing Industries is implementing the Scheme of Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure as one of the component of Pradhan Mantri Kisan SampadaYojana with the objective of arresting post-harvest losses of horticulture & non-horticulture produce and providing remunerative price to farmers for their produce. The integrated cold chain and preservation infrastructure can be set up by individuals, groups of entrepreneurs, cooperative societies, Self Help Groups (SHGs), Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), NGOs, Central/State PSUs, etc.